Entertainment Editor-at-Large, Los Angeles

YEAR after year it is billed as the fight to end all fights, and while no one would disagree the 2012 television ratings war has been a bloody one, there can only be one winner.

For the sixth consecutive year that winner is Seven, finishing the 40 weeks of the TV ratings year with a leading margin over its rivals. For the full ratings year, including the Olympic Games, Channel Seven won the year with a 30.5 per cent share of the five capital-city markets. Channel Nine came second with 28.9 per cent.

Ten scraped into third position with a 17.4 per cent share, narrowly ahead of the ABC's main channel, ABC1, which gave Ten serious chase in 2012 and, for a large part of the second half of the ratings year, actually outpaced it.

At the start of the year, the big story was billed as the fall of Channel Nine, resurgent but struggling under the weight of its multibillion-dollar debt. That story came to flashpoint only a month ago.

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But in the final length, Nine was reborn, debt-free, after a deal was stitched up by chief executive David Gyngell, and the story instead became the spectacular stumble of Channel Ten, crippled by management changes, poor programming and a shrinking audience.

Proving perhaps that slow and steady wins the race, Seven crossed the finish line first.

Nine may have won significant gains in the demographics and the ABC's resurgence may have bruised Ten, but Seven, whose program line-up was perhaps a little less sexy than Nine's, had a schedule powered by more breadth, depth and consistency. Those three qualities ensured it retained the ratings crown for another year.

But the margins - on all fronts - have narrowed, and both Seven and Ten now face a tough fight in 2013 to ensure they are not swamped by rivals that they have, for some years, kept at bay.

Snapping at Seven's heels is Nine, armoured with formidable firepower and an arsenal of shows - The Voice, The Block, Big Brother, Celebrity Apprentice - which are proving to be magnetic.